


Free And Easy On That Day

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Can I be any clearer?, F/M, If ships are your jam skip this one, Infidelity, Jughead chooses himself, POV Jughead Jones, The ending won't give you what you probably want, They don’t get back together, bughead breakup, had to write this to get it out of my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23736871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: Betty cheats on Jug with Archie. Jughead thinks about what it would mean to forgive her. Could anything in the world be more important that the person you love in high school?  This is absolutely not for everyone.  The implication of this story is that sometimes there are worse things than breaking up.
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper/ Jughead Jones (past), Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	Free And Easy On That Day

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t going to post this very short piece (written in a thirty minute lunch break) because I’d hate to make anyone feel worse about things but then I thought that if I tagged carefully someone might like to read it. Please don’t go near it if you’re someone for whom this stuff is a source of stress and worry. Always take care of yourselves.
> 
> The title is from Up The Wolves by the Mountain Goats. Here's a snippet of the lyric
> 
> There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet  
> No matter where you live  
> There'll always be a few things, maybe several things  
> That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive  
> There's gonna come a day when you'll feel better  
> You'll rise up free and easy on that day  
> And float from branch to branch lighter than the air  
> Just when that day is coming, who can say? Who can say?

He swiped the back of his hand across his eyes furtively, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the tears. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of the emotion, not really; it was just that the session had only just started and, if he was already weeping like a little bitch, where did he have to go from there?

“So Jughead, you feel betrayed. What else?”

“I feel like a fucking idiot. I believed her, every time she told me she loved me, every time she said I was “it” for her. I was such a fool. It just…it makes me mad.”

“Do you think she was trying to deceive you when she said that? Was that her plan?” Mrs Burble looked at him intently; she hadn’t missed the tears. She didn’t miss anything.

“I have no idea what the fuck she was trying to do but the fact that she’s sucking Andrew’s dick right now implies that there was a little dissembling happening, wouldn’t you agree?” He noticed that his fists were clenched and the dressings across his knuckles were staining with fresh blood. The broken window had been the last straw for his dad. JB was crying, screaming with fear and confusion and there was broken glass everywhere and blood spurting from the deepest cut on the back of his hand. FP had driven him to the emergency room and, apparently, while the stitches were being put in, he’d called Mrs Burble and got an emergency session. Now here Jug was, bleeding, crying, raging on the couch in his high school counsellor’s office like he was some freshman with an essay deadline he was trying to get extended rather than a man whose entire future had just burned up in front of his eyes.

“What would you have had her do differently?”

He almost lost it. Was she fucking high? “Well, ideally I’d rather that she didn’t fuck my best friend. If we’re talking perfect world here.”

“OK, but if she wanted to have sex with another person would you rather that she just repressed it? That she wanted someone else but stayed with you, and had sex with you, and in her heart wished you were him? Would that have been better?”

“No. She shouldn’t want him. She had me. I should have been what she wanted. She said she loved me. I don’t even think about other people let alone whore myself out.”

“She’s a whore because she wants someone other than you? Is that what you really think?” He felt revulsion at that. He’d said it but she wasn’t that, not that. He’d have killed someone who called her that. It was an ugly lie and it made bile rise in his throat.

“No. No. But how could she do this? She’s supposed to be with me.” The tears were outside his control now. The worst part was that if he’d felt this broken he’d always been able to go to her. She’d stroke back his hair and kiss his cheek, running her hand under his jaw, and it would all feel a little better. Then she’d have had a plan to solve whatever was wrong. Now she was the problem, or maybe he was. 

“Jughead, you’re a smart guy. You’re in awful pain and you have every right to be but instead of just raging and lashing out you can think this through. I’m not going to lie, it’s still going to hurt like a bitch but you have the resources to get through this. Now she wants someone else and you admit that you don’t want her to pretend she doesn’t. So what do you want?”

“Well she obviously needed to talk to me. She should have told me.”

“I absolutely agree.” Why did it feel like she was always three moves ahead in this conversation? “Why do you think she didn’t, maybe even why she couldn’t, do that? Do you think that she didn’t talk to you about this because she wanted to cause you as much pain as she could?”

“No, she was being a fucking coward. She was too scared.”

“What of? Was she scared you’d be mad? That you’d scream and hurt yourself? Break windows? Because I think she might have been right if she’d thought that.”

“Well I guess. But I also think she was too scared to say it because she knew it would break me. And so she did the one thing that could hurt even more. She crept around behind my back. Fuck!” He was hugging his arms around himself now, rocking as he tried to make the pain stop but it wouldn’t. It was never going to stop.

“OK, do you know what she wants now?” Mrs Burble was trying to get him to think it through rather than just feeling but it was so hard.

“She says she’s sorry, that she wants me. But she wants him too, I can tell that. There’s no way that she would have done this to me, to Veronica, to everyone if she didn’t want him.”

“And you can’t be with her like that?”

“No, of course I fucking can’t. I should be enough. Why aren’t I enough?”

“Jughead, you can’t tell people what to want. She did a terribly wrong thing when she acted on what she wanted without talking to you but you don’t get to choose what she wants. Do you think that she wanted to want him? Is she happy now?” He thought about her stricken, pale face. Her eyes had been full of agony and he could see that she had hurt her hands like she used to years ago, before them, before Betts and Juggy. 

“I don’t think she’s ever been more miserable.”

“So now you need to work out what you want. What really matters to you?”

“Well I want her back, obviously.”

“Are you sure? What will it cost you to take her back? What will it cost her?”

“I don’t follow you. I just want it all to go back to how it was before.”

“Not going to happen Jughead. It can’t be undone. Either you can take her back, knowing what she did and knowing she wants someone else. Knowing she’s pushing that down inside herself. Maybe it’ll go away and maybe it won’t. But you’ll never know for sure. Or you can let her go. It depends what matters to you most.”

“She matters to me most. She’s everything to me.”

“Is she? If you get her then you won’t feel hurt and angry anymore?”

“I’ll be hurt forever. She can’t treat me like I’m nothing and expect me to just take that. I deserve to be treated better.” Jug paused. “She showed me that. She always treated me better than anyone else. She taught me that I mattered even when no-one else though I did. My parents, kids here at school, my teachers all thought I was a bust, a loser, a weirdo and I agreed. But she showed me I was worth something. She always believed in me.”

“Ok so you matter too. As well as her. You need to decide if you can choose her without denying the value you place in yourself. Anything else?”

“I need her. I can’t cope without her. She has goals and targets and plans. I’ll just drift without her. I make dumb choices without her.” Jug heard himself, he sounded like a loser again. Did he really have so little self control that he needed a teenage girl who was as much of a screw up as him to run his life? Mrs B raised an eyebrow. “OK, I’m just ducking out of taking responsibility for myself. I can control my own life and I should. I’m not some stupid kid that needs her to mother me. But I just love her. It’s always been her.”

“Yeah, and sometimes the people we love don’t love us back, and sometimes their kind of love isn’t what we need or it’s the wrong time or they get sick and die.” She raised her left hand to show her wedding ring and Jug remembered her husband’s funeral only six months ago. But she was continuing. “And sometimes they fall in love with someone else and hurt us so badly that it can never be made right again. Love can suck. That’s our hour Jughead. Are you going to try to knock down the house with your fists anymore?”

“No, but I might feel like it.” 

He did feel like it. Everyday. There was a tearing agony in his chest all the time that made it hard to breathe but everyday it became clearer and clearer to him that there were things he valued in his life other than Betty Cooper and that he couldn’t have it all. She didn’t say much when he told her that he was sorry but that it was over between them. He told her he forgave her, which was almost true, but that he needed to be someone’s first and only choice and if that didn’t ever happen he was fine alone. And he walked away from her and didn’t look back so she’d never know how hard he was crying.

Four years later Betty and Arch were in the kitchen, in the house Fred Andrews had built, eating breakfast when the mailman knocked on the door. She knew what the parcel was as soon as she took it in her hands. She’d been half expecting it since she’d read the review online. She’d thought that it would hurt to see her name written in his looping clever handwriting after all this time but there was just a mailing label. It had come direct from the publisher, not from him personally. That hurt even more. She opened the parcel and showed the book to Arch. He opened the fly leaf, stopped abruptly and looked up at her with something like fear in his eyes. He shoved the book roughly back across the table and she looked at the dedication. 

“For EC. Thank you for the love, the belief and finally thank you for the pain. It made me the writer I have become. Wishing you nothing but love and happiness. FPJ III.” Not B, not J. Because she had destroyed that with reckless foolishness. But he had made himself a writer and he forgave her. She had no idea if she’d ever forgive herself. It wouldn’t be today anyway.


End file.
